As apparent by my absence the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve been CRAZY busy with teaching 7th grade US hist. It’s awesome, but I won’t lie – coming in at the end of the year leaves a lot of things to learn and quickly catch up on. In the past few weeks I’ve had to go through training on all kinds of tech/daily routine stuff, learn 135 names in 2 days, lesson plan, grade, lesson plan – and did I say grade?
I’m hoping that in the next few weeks I get into a groove, and get used to the schedule and learn to work quicker on things that need to be done. Fantastic help though – this school has “copy moms” who come in and make all your copies you need, twice a week, and it saves SO much time. Definitely an incentive to plan ahead…which I still don’t do often enough.
The biggest transition so far is getting used to how much more involved these parents are, and the bigger load of busy work middle schoolers are given. And by busy work, I mean worksheets that I would normally never grade with 12th graders- but are expected to be graded at this age group. I get their value to some extent, they just take up soooo much time!
Besides the busy work issues – the kids are great. I have 3 G/T classes, and 2 lower level classes, one of which has an instructional assistant because of IEP requirements. The kids are great – per usual, the lower level kids are my favorite, they’re just so much more fun in my opinion. The IA is nice in regards to having someone there to help with little tasks like passing out papers, or helping my more unfocused kids stay on task, but it is a bit weird having another adult in there while you teach. Still getting used to the idea of being observed by a peer I guess. But it is fantastic, and I’m hopeful that in the coming days I’ll have more to share about technology & other issues I come to face in the classroom!